Re: case sensitivity of mv

[Eric Blake]

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Please keep replies on the list, so that others may chime in.

According to Francky Leyn on 6/24/2007 8:17 AM:
>> 
>> This is a design feature of case-insensitive file systems.  It is not
>> coreutils' fault that the underlying OS refuses to do case-insensitive
>> renames when the file system cannot tell the two spellings apart, rather,
>> mv is merely reporting the results of its attempt to use the rename(2)
>> syscall.
>> 
>> On case-insensitive file systems, a case-changing rename requires a
>> two-pass rename:
>> mv webboy webboy1; mv webboy1 WebBoy
> 
> 
> I did the mv on cygwin running on NTFS from Windows XP pro.
> So NTFS is case-insensitive?

NTFS is case-preserving.  It is up to the OS whether NTFS is used in a
case-insensitive manner (as most Windows applications have chosen), or a
case-sensitive manner (there are APIs to do this, even in Windows, but
they are not very well used).  Cygwin can do either
(http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-cygwinenv.html, see details about
CYGWIN=check_case), but defaults to the Windows default of
case-insensitive, because so many Windows applications choke when
encountering two files by the same case-insensitive name.  Cygwin also
provides the notion of managed mounts, which allow for case-sensitive
names transparently atop the file system (even on FAT, which is
case-insensitive), by transparently encoding what would otherwise be an
invalid Windows name (for example, "aux" in a cygwin managed mount is
rendered "%61ux" to all other windows apps, with the side effect of
reducing the worst-case maximum filename length from the already small 260
down to 86 characters).

And you are better off asking about this on the cygwin list, rather than
the coreutils list.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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